Dear Arduino community, we need to talk

Today is the day of a solar eclipse, some of these are once in a lifetime events.

Arduino is definitely one of the events that will define my life along with many other people’s life.

I’m feeling incredibly blessed to have contributed to create this amazing community which gathered around the idea that we can empower people to master complex technologies and unleash their ability to create with them.

Dear community I’m sorry I didn’t comment earlier, I was keeping quiet to try to find a resolution to our internal issues that would not damage you, the community.

We’ve been so committed to keep the issues internal that for a year we haven’t receiving any royalty from the boards made in Italy, but we continued to work hoping to find a solution.I’ve told the story to Make read it if you want to know more.

Now the other party has abandoned the negotiating table and, after a lot of recent events, the cat is out of the bag.I owe you to be part of what is going on.

We created Arduino based on a set of values that have enabled the community to grow, touch any kind of people and contribute to changing the world a bit.

I am here to say that we will continue to fight so that Arduino stays true to those values. There is only one Arduino and there is only one Arduino community. We’re strong, we’re having a positive impact on so many people’s life.

We have so many news we want to share with you but be patient until Arduino Day, let’s celebrate together the amazing community we are (261 Global events!!!) , and you’ll know more.

I’m sure you have a lot of questions an we’re going to try to answer them in due time, compatibly with the fact that lawyers are involved and I can’t say too much.

An eclipse is just a temporary moment of darkness, but soon after the sun comes back shining.

14 Responses to “Dear Arduino community, we need to talk”

Thank you for creating Arduino! Thank to all 4 of you for making it open! You took open source spirit to the maximum level : open hardware!
Thank you for being Fair!
You lost a friend, the team lost a member… but arduino community … we didn’t lose nothing! We still have you! We still have arduino.cc ! And here we donnot admit betrayals!
Thank you!
( they’ll lose! Fidati! Se ho sempre detto che prima o poi i problemi arriverano… e avevo tristemente ragione, mo fidati che nel giro di un anno a fallire tristemente saranno loro! 🙂 )

Massimo, You and the Arduino community have done something admirable: in a world focused on consumption, you have created something of value. Arduino.cc has fueled countless Makers to help create a better world – one little project at at time. Please continue to fight for the Maker community – we are behind you.

Unfortunately, i`m one of the “people bought an Arduino board made in Italy in the last year thinking they were supporting the project”. =((
I pay the difference over cheap clones only to return Arduino’s boys a little reward for so many hours and $ dedicated to this colossal project.
The worst thing, IMHO, is to realize that some people don’t understand nothing of the open culture, and in a real oposition to this philosophy they take for them all the disinterested work of many people that dedicated part of his life to contribute to a project.

I studied automotive Engineering but worked for many years a boring deskjob in Administration and Management. Thanks to the Arduino and the Maker Movement I found back to the things I like doing. I hope very much that the Arduino Team can succeed and overcome this setback. Let us know how we can support you. I am very thankful for what all of you have done!

I am confident that you will find a reasonable solution and Arduino will continue to be both an inspiration and the way to achieve even the most crazy ideas. One request, since my company as also Arduino distributor, please let me know how and where we can now source Arduino boards. Shame that no information has been provided :/ Regards!

As someone who has worked to make sure my organization bought authenic Arduino boards for the last few years it is quite annoying to find out that the only difference between Italian clones and Chinese clones is the Chinese don’t claim to be the “real” Arduino.
Please let us know what venders are providing you with payments.
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